I. Field
The following description relates generally to wireless communication systems and more particularly to establishing communication routes or tunnels in wireless communication systems.
II. Background
Wireless communication systems have become a prevalent means by which a majority of people worldwide have come to communicate. These systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., bandwidth and transmit power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems, and other systems.
A typical wireless communication system or network (e.g., employing frequency, time, and/or code division techniques) includes one or more base stations that provide a coverage area and one or more mobile (e.g., wireless) terminals that can transmit and receive data within the coverage area. A typical base station can concurrently transmit multiple data streams for broadcast, multicast, and/or unicast services, wherein a data stream is a stream of data that can be of independent reception interest to a mobile terminal. A mobile terminal within the coverage area of a base station can be interested in receiving one, more than one, or all the data streams carried by the composite stream. Likewise, a mobile terminal can transmit data to the base station or another mobile terminal.
In such communication systems, it is desirable to provide uninterrupted service when the mobile device moves between neighboring geographic cells, referred to as handoff. Such transfer is important since an interruption can result in quality degradation, dropped communications, or other undesirable situations. Thus, there is a need to support handovers from a current base station to a target base station.